Questions tagged [onomatopoeia]

A word that phonetically imitates or suggests the source of the sound that it describes. Common occurrences of onomatopoeias include animal noises such as "oink", "meow", "roar" or "chirp", or human sounds like "yawn", "gulp" or "mwah".

I have searched and asked others for the answer to this but have come up dry: what is the name or technique in music where musical notes approximate/imitate speech? Note that I am not talking about ...

I mean, obviously "corrosion" isn't actually onomatopoeic, because corrosion doesn't make a sound (or at least not one that humans can hear). Yet it seems to me that the word corrosion sounds like its ...

Just wanted to know how to write in a chat room the sound for "spit".
As in "meow" for the sound that a cat makes, what would you write for the sound of the verb "spit"?
(Google wasn't very helpful, ...

Wikipedia mentions that:
Some languages flexibly integrate onomatopoeic words into their structure. This may evolve into a new word, up to the point that it is no longer recognized as onomatopoeia. ...

As a spin-off from this comment:
If a human exclaims something like "ouch!", I believe it's considered an interjection.
But if a pig exclaims "oink!", what is the part of speech?
And if a bell goes ...

I just recently ran into someone making the claim that the use of "ook" to represent the sound a monkey makes is a reference to the librarian from the Unseen University of Terry Pratchett's Discworld ...

Clearing one's throat is a nice way to signal that special attention is needed. For example, two colleagues are making fun of their boss as she walks right by. She listens for a second and then ... ...

We know that woof is the sound a dog makes when barking. It is used both as a noun and a verb. The word is onomatopoeic but it is also used as an interjection. People woof too when they are attracted ...

A lisp is a "a speech defect in which s is pronounced like th in thick and z is pronounced like th in this". Its etymology reads:
Old English wlispian (recorded in āwlyspian), from wlisp (adjective)...

While writing a commentary for Shakespeare's Troilus and Cressida, my classmate and I got into a small quarrel over the classification of an onomatopoeia.
We were wondering, for the line “O madness ...

"kekeke" is somewhat of an alternative to "hehehe" or "huehuehue". From Urban Dictionary:
This is an onomatopoeia for laughter. Its origin is the Korean onomatopoeia ㅋㅋㅋ, in which ㅋ stands for the "...

I'm writing a comic, and a character is about to ask another character for help, but it's taken her a lot of effort to be able to ask for help. So, before she finally asks she takes a deep breath and ...

I may be spelling this wrong or this may be a poor version of the word but I am looking for the spelling and meaning of the word caploui
I am trying to use it in a sentence like ' and all of a sudden,...

I want the audience to be sure what was crunching was torn apart deer bones, not the crunch of the joint capsules of the old wolf, whenever it bent its knees to take another bite. What word or phrase ...

I've been looking trying to find an onomatopoeia for a car starting. I've tried to come up with it by making the sound myself, but I come up blank and quite frankly failed to mimicking the sound. It's ...

First of all: I'm not a native english speaker, I'm using a translator. I want to know what the exact sound is for when you take off a sticker from something. El sonido exacto para cuando despegas o ...

I'm searching for a word describing the sound of blood drops falling on someone's shoulder. I found some describing the sound of liquids hitting a surface, such as tap, splat, and tuck. I was going ...

I am inclined to think that 'to suck your teeth' is a possible description for the sound 'tsk'. Is there any good source to support (or dismiss) my assumption?
By 'tsk' I mean the onomatopoeia for a ...

I saw this other question, but it's not quite what I'm asking.
A bell makes a sound. How would you write that sound in English? As an interjection, e.g. "boom!"
I'm sure it varies with the type and ...